Some of you must use Yahoo Groups. Some of you may already know that Yahoo has rolled out an untested beta program on thousands of selected, individual members which they intend to inflict on everyone that uses Yahoo Groups. It's called neo.

Neo makes a group virtually unuseable for anyone who has been forcibly enrolled in this test and there are thousands world-wide.

Yahoo Groups are not social networks. Most of them are sources of information on a single topic that are of great and sometimes vital interest to the members.

Blind members can no longer read their groups with their special equipment if they are part of this neo experiment. Those who have cognitive impairment cannot read the run-on blocks of text that are a result of neo. Owners and moderators who have been forced into neo cannot even manage their groups.

If you care, if you belong to a Yahoo Group, please go HERE and add your voice to those of the thousands of people who are (perhaps vainly) asking for a return to a format that works.

Gil. moderator of a canine health and nutrition group with blind members

_________________________
"Best not to think about it. I don't want to fall to bits 'cos of excess existential thought."

I avoid anything "yahoo" like the plague, but this sounds like it was very useful for those who were in these groups. I don't understand why they DO these things... You'll probably have about as much luck as those of us who use the iGoogle home page which they are getting rid of soon... which is not much luck at all.

You have dogs, you know how much they become part of our families, how we worry about them when they're ill, how we grieve for them when they leave us. There are groups on Yahoo dedicated to keeping dogs healthy, training them, dealing with issues like epilepsy, Addison's Disease, Cushing's Disease, Chronic Renal Failure...the list goes on and on.

These are groups where distraught people can get real, honest help from those who've been there. And they represent just a small slice of the specialized knowledge found on Yahoo Groups.

School groups are shutting down. Groups dedicated to train enthusiasts, businesses, quilting, graphic arts, fan fiction, any number of things, are giving up and closing. It's sad.

What gets me is that I have seen nothing about this unconscionable attack on Yahoo Groups on ZDNet or Cnet or any of the websites devoted to computers and technology, though as one group member who is an IT professional said, his co-workers are shaking their heads over Yahoo's dumping an untested beta program on their members (which they refuse to roll back) and risking their credibility.

I first came to the list I moderate when my German Shepherd Dog was seriously ill. I've stayed on for many years because of the caring, knowledgeable people there. I hate the thought of the list being destroyed because Yahoo wants to copy FaceBook.

Gil.

_________________________
"Best not to think about it. I don't want to fall to bits 'cos of excess existential thought."

Look in the address for your group at the top of your browser. If 'neo' is in it, you have been hijacked into Yahoo's new format.

If you find moderating or managing your groups next to impossible, you have neo.

If the image at the top of your home page makes no sense for your group...Yahoo seems to like test tubes as a representative image for my dog health list...you have neo.

If spam is flooding your new messages and you can do nothing about it, you've got neo alright.

Well over 33,000 votes against neo in one thread alone on Yahoo's 'user voice' pages and Yahoo continues to "gather feedback", as if the tide will suddenly turn in their favor if they wait long enough. I have news for them.

Gil.

_________________________
"Best not to think about it. I don't want to fall to bits 'cos of excess existential thought."

Virus is right. I don't use Flickr or Tumblr (evidently someone decided 'e' was overused in English) so I don't know what's happened to them, but it's fairly obvious to me that Yahoo wants to be rid of Groups. And what a great way to go about it, alienating as many people as possible. Neo was rolled out a month ago as fully functioning software. Ha! It ought to be funny.

The sad thing is, there is no alternative I can find that can accommodate a list like mine of over six thousand members. Not even dear old Google.

Gil.

I didn't think I'd be laughing about this, but one user put it so well for all the rest of us.

We deeply value how much you, our users, care about Yahoo! Groups "Translation: "Tough luck Daisy, but feel free to moo all you want, it's not like we bother with what our cattle thinks anyway".

.

_________________________
"Best not to think about it. I don't want to fall to bits 'cos of excess existential thought."